Shelf Life: Bonnie Tsui
Welcome to Shelf Life, ELLE.com’s books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you’re here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.
Journalist Bonnie Tsui understands the assignment: Write what you know. Her first book, 2010’s American Chinatown, was inspired in part by her childhood experiences in New York’s Chinatown, where her grandfather worked at a fortune cookie factory and her grandmother was a seamstress. Her second, 2021’s Why We Swim, came about thanks to her time as a swim instructor and competitive swimmer. Now comes her latest, On Muscle, drawing on Tsui’s experiences as a surfer and triathlete who rowed crew and played water polo in college. She’s the author of a children’s book, Sarah and the Big Wave, and her television credits include appearing in the documentary The Search for General Tso and the History Channel series America: Promised Land, as well as consulting on Hulu’s series adaptation of Charles Yu’s novel Interior Chinatown.
The Queens-born, Long Island-raised, California-based bestselling author has two children; majored in English and American Literature and Language at Harvard University; studied at the University of Sydney; was named by her late grandfather (her Chinese name, Ling Fung, means “clever phoenix” and became the name of a BBQ restaurant on Interior Chinatown); was baptized at Transfiguration Church on Mott Street and married in Lake George; was born in the Year of the Dragon; remembers the first person she rescued from drowning; once drove around Japan in an RV; and wore hot dog fingers one Halloween.
Fan of: Open water; Hamilton Fish pool on New York City’s Lower East Side; Locals flip-flops; San Francisco Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park; Portsmouth Square for people-watching; Sturgill Simpson’s “Breakers Roar”; margaritas and High West American Prairie bourbon; ZBoard custom surfboards.
Good at: Meeting deadlines; making one of her favorite dinners (poached trout and roasted broccoli) in less than 15 minutes.
Bad at: Buying underwear.
Check out her book recommendations below.
The book that…:
…I recommend over and over again:
Shark Heart by Emily Habeck. Fantastically original, beautifully written, strange, and true. It will take you out of your everyday; it will restore you to your element, forever changed.
…shaped my worldview:
Hiroshima. This was the book that first showed me that nonfiction stories, even simply told, could possess the narrative power of a novel—and change the world in the process. John Hersey is a legend.
…I read in one sitting; it was that good:
City of Thieves (a.k.a. what David Benioff was up to pre-Game of Thrones). So entertaining, and so masterfully tragicomic, with great, vivid characters that jump off the page.
…made me laugh out loud:
Big Swiss by Jen Beagin. Like, all flavors of laughing, from snorting to gut-busting.
…broke my heart:
Fire Rush. I had the immense honor of reading Jacqueline Crooks’s debut as a judge for a literary prize, and I cannot say enough about the muscular musicality of her writing. This novel pulses with sound, character, and feeling…what it means to be furiously, painfully alive.
…I’ve re-read the most:
To the Lighthouse. I don’t often re-read books—at least not on purpose; I’ve definitely forgotten that I’ve read a book before!—but Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece has followed me from high school to college, from adolescence to young adulthood and motherhood. My childhood best friend and I first read this book in English class, and we still discuss it to this day. It’s fair to say that I grew up with the characters, and they’ve resonated with me through all stages of life. Charles Tansley is still goddamn insufferable, though.
…I consider literary comfort food:
The Lager Queen of Minnesota. During the pandemic, I broke two ribs while surfing—and immediately put a call out for books to keep despair at bay. In a time when I couldn’t move without pain, this book was a delicious balm (though I had to learn to laugh only with my mouth, not my whole body, as I am accustomed to doing). And I immediately read everything else by J. Ryan Stradal.
…makes me feel seen:
Interior Chinatown. And it’s not just because Charles Yu (bless him) quotes me for the epigraph. It’s just so thrillingly inventive and funny and poignant. The novel gives an expansiveness and imaginative depth to the Chinese American experience in ways no other book has done before.
…features the most beautiful book jacket:
You Could Make This Place Beautiful. I mean, gorgeous. Happily, it matches all the brilliant stuff inside by Maggie Smith, too.
…everyone should read:
Solito. Ohhh, this book. Javier Zamora puts all of his tender humanity into this powerful telling of his crossing into America as a child. You won’t be able to think of the crisis at the southern border in the same way ever again.
…I could only have discovered at Bart’s Books in Ojai, California:
Shalako, a Louis L’Amour paperback Western that my artist father painted the cover art for in 1989.
…fills me with hope:
Orbital. That one slim volume can be so exquisite on the sentence level and at the same time have the capacity to hold the universe and restore my love for the world? I worship at the altar of Samantha Harvey.
Bonus question: If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be:
Can I split time? The British Library, Daunt Books Marylebone, and the New York Public Library.